The penny trumpet sounds, and off we go—­not on our journey, but all over the town to the different hotels, to pick up live freight.  I heartily hoped they might all oversleep themselves that morning.  Alas! no such luck.  Jonathan and a weasel are two animals that are very rarely caught napping.  Passengers kept coming in until we were six, and “comfortable enough” became a misnomer.  A furious blast of the tin tube, with a few spicy impromptu variations, portended something important, and, as we pulled up, we saw it was the post-office; but, murder of murders! we saw four more passengers!  One got up outside; another was following; Jarvey stopped him, with—­“I guess there aint no room up here for you; the mail’s a-coming here.”  The door opened,—­the three damp bodkins in line commenced their assault,—­the last came between my companion and myself, I could not see much of him, it was so dark; but—­woe is me!—­there are other senses besides sight, and my unfortunate nostrils drank in a most foetid polecatty odour, ever increasing as he drew nearer and nearer.  Room to sit there was none; but, at the blast of the tube, the rattle over the pitty pavement soon shook the obnoxious animal down between us, squeezing the poisonous exhalation out of him at each successive jolt.  As dawn rose, we saw he was a German, and doubtless the poor fellow was very hard-up for money, and had been feeding for some time past on putrid pork.  As for his hide and his linen, it would have been an unwarrantable tax upon his memory to have asked him when they had last come in contact with soap and water.  My stomach felt like the Bay of Biscay in an equinoctial gale, and I heartily wished I could have dispensed with the two holes at the bottom of my nose.  I dreaded asking how far he was going; but another passenger—­under the influence of the human nosegay he was constrained to inhale—­summed up the courage to pop the question, and received a reply which extinguished in my breast the last flickering ray of Hope’s dim taper—­“Sair, I vosh go to Nashveele.”  Only conceive the horror of being squashed into such a neighbour for twenty-one long hours, and over a road that necessarily kept jerking the unwashed and polecatty head into your face ten times in a minute!  Who that has bowels of compassion but must commiserate me in such “untoward circumstances?”

Although we had left the hotel at four, it was five before we left the town, and about seven before we unpacked for breakfast, nine miles out of town.  The stench of my neighbour had effectually banished all idea of eating or drinking from my mind; so I walked up and down outside, smoking my cigar, and thinking “What can I do?” At last, the bright idea struck me—­I will get in next time with my cigar; what if we are nine herrings in the barrel?—­everybody smokes in this country—­they won’t object—­and I think, by keeping the steam well up, I can neutralize a little of the polecat.  So when the time came for starting, I